“The notes are the least important part of music. There’s a lot of great music that doesn’t even have notes, but the people that make it are people of great personal power and personal conviction and people who life means something to. Someone like this guy, Rosy Parlane, who just put out a great record, it’s called “Iris,” I think. It’s on Touch. There are very little notes on that album. It’s not about notes, it’s mostly sounds. But it’s such an incredible, beautiful energy inside of it that to me, it sounds like listening to a great pop record or a great rock record or a great classical record or whatever. The notes don’t matter at all. Aside from notes, you have to remember that it’s a combination of rhythm, notes and texture. Music is not just notes. Rhythm, notes and texture. The notes have a correlation to the way that life goes up and down and the notes go up and down. Inwardly we go up and down, and notes go up and down. That’s what they mean to us. When you put chords behind it, it starts to work into appealing to your subconscious in a way that expresses things that we can’t intellectually express.”

Neumu (USA):

Iris exposed Parlane as a focal artist in modern music. Adorned with Jon Wozencraft’s superlative photographs of abandoned, snow-encrusted pastoral landscapes seen through a blue filter, this work acutely articulates the malaise and mystery spurred by a season of blustery blizzards and frozen icicles drooping off of rooftops. Parlane paints on a canvas of arching drones with hailstorms of glitch electronica, an occasional sibilance of hazy white noise and sharp shafts of digital sound equivalent to squalls of wind snapping at a metal awning. Given that where I am presently it is -37 degrees outside, one might imagine that I would be playing Endless Summer ad nauseam, yet Iris accommodates itself so well with the winter season. With the inclusion of subtle field recordings and organic instruments such as a celestial church organ, these compositions stand out from their peers on account of the human quality with which each is imbued.

The Wire (UK):

Jon Wozencroft’s impeccable photography and design packages Rosy Parlane’s Iris inside a predominantly blue package, inextricably linking the music to the emotional resonance of the colour. If this has more to do with the power of suggestion of the Touch branding campaign, Parlane’s audio impression is certainly nothing to scoff at. He flushes his soundfields with cascades of digital fragments which he separates into two distinct compositional categories. On the one hand, Parlane stretches sounds from guitar, piano and organ into unrecognisable drones that swell into dense layerings, every once in a while coalescing into fluttering half-melodies. On the other, he emphasises the textural qualities of those digital fragments, simulating the natural acoustics of ice crackling from trees in winter or the gentle patter of rain on a windowsill. When fusing these together by placing the textures against the backdrop of the drone, Parlane effectively builds pointillist sound environments with a profoundly human melancholia. [Jim Haynes]

Stylus (USA):

The photos adorning this piece depict snow-encrusted pastoral landscapes, ominous but icily beautiful, with not a person to be seen. And, like them, Iris unfurls tepid yet chilled, organic yet metallic, like a felt covered gong being struck softly in winter, the snow it harboured fluttering away, leaving its exposed skin to shake amid cold air.
Split into three lengthy parts, Rosy Parlane, is essentially writing aural short stories. Initially, Parlane, plants a seed, the setting, allowing enough time for the listener to gain familiarity with the whistling tones, undulating waves of ambience, and occasional glitch hailstorms. A few steps into ‘Part One’, and a wavering drone takes on characteristics of a faraway, unseen yet massive, generator. Parlane is quick to apply a variety of evolving textures against his drones. These frenzied rattles that dart through sheets of wind and ambience, create a sense of space and draw the listener in further. Hitherto the alien horizons take on a human feel. A croaking of crickets, a light stammer of footsteps wading through snow, the bristling of tree branches and extended pulses which blow like the wind, craft an impression wherein you’re standing by a poorly ventilated wooden window, ice seeping in, as you stare out onto abandoned, snow covered hills. Rich harmonics, shift, commingle, and eventually evolve into arching drones, constantly in flux overhead. With the atmosphere becoming denser, crackling campfire electronics spark from a dying fire left behind.

Parlane has learnt how to pace himself. Iris invites you to leave a polluted macroscopic world to, instead, wander through a coherent opus of microscopic excursions. Even with an array of textures being used the work never feels as though a burlap sack of digital trickery is simply being emptied. Unlike so many, there is a patience to Parlane’s work a honed ability to see ideas through to the end and to exhaust their potential. As such, when a harsh hailstorm of glitch electronics pours down at the climax point of ‘Part One’, it feels like an actual storm has arrived, since the steps taken prior to its onset leads so naturally to this outburst.

‘Part Two’, though more languid in pace, at first reminds of Philip Jeck’s ‘Wholesome’. That is, until an occasional sibilance of hazy white noise and clattering of plates pock marks the almost celestial church organ that began the piece. At just over eighteen minutes, the resonant hums that segue into a crest of reverberating, noticeably metallic, bell-like tones could have been condensed significantly without harmfully circumcising the intended effect.

The album’s most mournful piece is its closer. It begins with a quasi melodic church organ which is soon splattered with glitch interference and sharp shafts of digital noise akin to the clammer of someone sorting through a file cabinet. These sounds are woven together expertly to paint a rather haunting impression, eventually coalescing the seismic sizzles into a high-energy drone, filling the aural space like a horde of echoing voices.

Iris mirrors the frosty, desolate landscapes decorating its linear notes. The music, which stems from largely artificial sound sources, nevertheless beams with a human feel unbeknownst to its peers. A homage to winter nights, Iris is an environment onto itself. [Max Schaefer]

Dusted (USA):

My impressions of this album have been indelibly shaped by the cover photo of a blue-filtered, scrupulously symmetrical winter. Parlane’s layers of long, wavering tones and hissing static are, like the image, crisp, bright, and detailed; it’s hard to believe that this music was recorded in the breezy and not-too-icy environs of Auckland, New Zealand.
But geographical origin isn’t so important to this music; while Parlane’s musical roots are in New Zealand, where he first recorded (with the trio Thela) and established his most enduring musical relationship (with Dion Workman, of Thela and Parmentier), he’s spent the better part of a decade living the “have laptop, will travel” life, basing himself in the UK and Australia and performing with such diverse musicians as Eddie Prevost, Mattin, and Fennesz. Likewise, Parlane’s tools (reportedly piano, guitar, sampler, digital sound processing) don’t mean too much; this isn’t instrumental music, but deftly deployed sound. Sound so powerful that it’s rather hard to write about — every time I put the record on and sit down at the keyboard to write, I end up just listening.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Iris’s three tracks are numbered, not named, a none-too-subtle redirection away from language and toward so the record’s considerable sensual presence. But words are what we use at Dusted, so let’s get to work. “Part 1” emerges reluctantly from silence; high, flickering tones accrue around a swelling, organ-like figure like filings upon a magnet. The central figure hints at but don’t quite resolve into a churchy melody; a distant jet-like whoosh thickens the sound, then a blizzard of bright hiss brings static (or is it running water?) to the foreground. Static, but not stasis, because even when you can’t spot any moving parts, Parlane’s music feels like it’s going somewhere. On “Track 2” he patiently refines and reduces the sound to a single long-held flutter, savors its hypnotic essence a while, then lets it go. Liberated, it flits into an aggregate of subtly rhythmic elements, to jubilant effect. “Part 3” is darker and heavier, like storm clouds lit with lightning. But there’s no thunder; the dark grind just gets louder, as though you’re flying towards the cloud. Then you’re through it, bursting into a flicker that’s at once naturalistic and mechanical. Is it water on rocks? A film projector? Wind rustling ice crystals from the tree branches on the cover? Before you can say, it’s gone — until you turn the CD on again. [Bill Meyer]

paristransatlantic.com (web):

Iris is an enigma from its first inhalation. Broken into three lengthy sections, Auckland-based Rosy Parlane plays guitar, piano and other digital entities to craft something from another cosmos. The dreamy electronic drone has the chill of a church organ with variable weights and scales. Shadowy layers wander through a torrent of tiny electronic branches chafing the peripheral tunnel of sound. Cool tones emerge, crispy, like ice melting away to leave a vague hiss and diminishing, translucent debris. Part two opens like a cautious winter day, the title Iris seemingly informing the choreography of its snaking tonalities. Its use of field recordings throughout is like some type of reference (memory) chip reading information faster than Evelyn Wood. It’s a sheer rapturous ambient coast, with distant squirming as if characters were repeatedly dropping silverware and ceramic saucers on marble-topped tables in a high-ceilinged café, heightening the sur-reality of memory, over and over again. The atmospheric light produced becomes open, free, and lush. In the last segment of the trilogy, dusk falls and the room darkens, bringing a peculiar sense of dread / repose / change. Maybe a reflection of the short life cycle of the luminous blue flower (or deep visionary inner eye) of the album title. Depending on the space you play this in it could have a hushed, background quality (your own lil’ secret) or become an all-encompassing surround-sound drone mutating all other ambient noise. The nearer we come to the conclusion, the more ominous things become, until the final few minutes when the 0s and 1s seem to be edited into something akin to a waterfall breaking up into smaller bodies of water, broadening, spread with sparseness. Iris polarizes its sound the way acupuncture can completely reallocate the axis of your reflexes. [Tim Norris]

Brainwashed (USA):

Ineffable and at the limits of experience, the sounds inside this gorgeous little package break experiential limits. Though the imagery in the booklet suggests a cold and drifting place, I imagine the music to be more akin to viewing the sun from only a few thousand miles away. Rosy Parlane’s rich and vibrant pulses eminate and exude away from a center boiling over with the unspeakable. Divided into three pieces, Iris sounds like the universal Om hissing in through subjective ears, playing with the phenomenology of experience, and coming to rest in the form of a vision: perhaps a certain place or a certain time will flash back from memory one listen and, on another, my mind will simply blank and release itself from troubles and worries. The bulk of the music isn’t all zen-like meditations on existence, though. “Part 2” hums and modulates away over the organic sounds of glass, chains, and textured friction washing by in an organized concerto for metal surfaces and brooms. “Part 1” rolls along slowly, almost like a lullaby, until the processed sound of white noise begins raining down over the calm. Raining is a completely apt description; Parlane manages to create a digital rainfall out of bits of white noise that, while going to sleep, had me wanting to get up and check if clouds were rolling in. Iris naturally moves into the melodic at times; layers upon layers of sound will suddenly match up in perfect sequence to create moments of strange beauty. The layers drift by eachother eventually and return to the unknown, but these brief forays into familiar territory are welcome when they happen and never break the trance of the drones create. “Part 3” is perhaps the most stunning of the three pieces and the most carefully constructured. The rhythmic popping and snapping mix perfectly with the organ flows passing above and beneath them. Strangely enough, this last track was an exotic and ominous soundstrack to a drive into the city – the music can be heard a thousand different ways and different people I’ve played this for have described entirely different visuals. The end of the record runs away like the sound of a projector at the end of the film roll – it’s a movie where everyone sees something different and where the images stay unbroken in the mind for days to come. [Lucas Schleicher]

Aquarius (USA):

While perhaps not as prolific as his former partner Dean Roberts (they played together in the Sonic Youth inspired avant-rock trio Thela), Rosy Parlane has quietly constructed a quite impressive career himself. Iris is Parlane’s third solo album, after a couple of releases on his own Sigma Editions imprint and a collaboration with Christian Fennesz. In many ways, Iris echoes the recent Fennesz masterpiece Venice, as DSP filters perpetually spiral samples into immersive drone constructions. Parlane’s Iris is less focused on the suggestions of melody and more concerned with textural abstractions which softly shower upon the composition’s minimal foundation. Spread across three extended pieces, Iris is a bleary low key album, supposedly crafted from organ, piano, and guitar, but you might not necessarily guess so. Parlane’s digital treatment of those source materials renders almost all of the references to the original instruments unrecognizable: a series of monochromatic blurs of ambient sound quietly activated by distant mechanical whirrings and icy fragments that are just as fragile as they are cold. Certainly on par with the laptop intellect of Stephan Mathieu and Akira Rabelais.

All Music Guide (USA):

This is Rosy Parlane’s first “major” release after a handful of albums on tiny labels (including his own Sigma imprint), and his strongest achievement to date. The music has now lost any trace of harshness (which was still present in 2001’s Getxo) to adopt a soft, shimmering quality. Jon Wozencroft’s predominantly blue photographs adorning the booklet aptly reflect the character of the music: calm, snugly warm, slightly sad or pensive. Once again Fennesz comes to mind, but a Fennesz stripped from his reassuring melodies and occasional harsh outbursts, leaving only the rich textures of filtered sounds. Iris is comprised of three pieces titled “Part One,” “Part Two,” and “Part Three,” and they truly give the impression of a single work in three movements. Each piece establishes its mood immediately, then takes its time to evolve, giving the listener time to accept its inherent logic ? or to be oblivious to the stretched-out fade-ins and slow turns. “Part Two” is a delicate, ever-shifting cloud: you can decide to lay down on it and be carried or gaze into it to watch the fog currents interact, your eyes unable to reach the other side of the cloud, except in the very last few seconds, when the whole thing swiftly dematerializes. The human factor is very strong throughout the album; Parlane has planted in his music a sense of kindness that is too rare in this kind of music. Listeners who come to experimental electronica by way of Fennesz should seriously consider choosing Iris as their next step. [François Couture]

Three Long tracks of immersive ambience from a New Zealand soundscaper form a lazy heat haze drift, a quiet end to a noisy day. It’s made from guitar and piano loops, but it opens up floating worlds so digitally processed as to be unrecognisable from moon-based telescopes. This is just beautiful. [Graeme Rowland]

Grooves (USA):

A former member of Thela alongside Dean Roberts, Rosy has never quite achieved the same degree of recognition with his work on various obscure antipodean labels, but Iris ought to put a stop to that. These three lengthy tracks have something of the signature Touch sound – slowly enveloping environments of sound – but Parlane has really perfected it while sounding very distinctive. The album is characterized most of all by retsraint, building a critical mass often through implication and subtlety rather than any particular increase in volume. Iris is arranged into three parts. The first builds static into a slow-motion drone motif in a manner that sounds like it should become a constant build-up in intensity; surprisingly, it merely mutates in form rather than mass and slowly refines itself into a thin wisp of noise. The second part is the most gently ecstatic, a soft organ note accompanied by some glassy effects that fall away altogether by the midpoint for several minutes, until some similarly concentrated guitar feedback forms an interaction with the drone. Part three is the most pensive track, swelling like a flood tide before cutting to what could well be the run-out of a cinema reel. Such unpredictable organic fluid is endemic to Iris, making repeated listens highly rewarding. It’s hard not to listen to this music in the context of the cover art (wintry images from northern Europe), as it has some of the gravity one associates with snow and ice clinging to window frames. But maybe that just reflects a desire for this sound to have some sort of meaning. As it is, Iris is a classic, a brilliant example of how more abstract sound fields can produce some truly heart-stopping, intensely deep music. [John Gibson]

tinymixtapes (USA):

Music — and most often its abstract extensions — seems to be intrinsically linked to its visual cover art as the image leads your ears down the music’s path. At least that is true for Iris, the debut full-length from Rosy Parlane, that is accompanied with a gaze from a behind a windowsill over a wintry, whitewashed landscape.

Parlane, in Iris’s three immersive, sprawling, and spacious tracks, blends the looped, stretched, and expanded sounds of a guitar, organ, and piano into drones of warmth and fluidity. Meticulously and effectively crafting his soundscapes with the deepest human sentiments, Parlane uses the emotions of melancholia and nostalgia as instruments that evoke sweetness and affection. With this tender touch of humanity, Iris is an experience unto itself as it creates aural environments to explore and waves of sound to get lost in for hours on end.

Sonically, Iris approaches the work of Venice, the recent masterpiece by Fennesz, as well as Keith Fullerton Whitman’s ambient Playthroughs, with each of Iris’ three sections featuring textured soundscapes and digital fragments that are as intricate and beautiful as each falling snowflake adorning the album’s cover. But through the gossamer drones and shimmering layers of multihued sound, fractured melodies surface through the lush, endless loops that rewards repeated listens and long exposures. And, if you listen close enough, you can almost feel the frost melting off the window and Europe’s vast winter expanse warming as Rosy Parlane’s gentle, droning waves drip out of your speakers. [rynptts]

XLR8R (USA):

Sometime Christian Fennesz collaborator Rosy Parlane apparently constructs hos recordings from sample loops, pianos, guitars and field recordings manipulated by digital means, but these named sound sources are barely discernible in his expansive drone pieces. Unlike fellow Touch artist Chris Watson, Parlane offers no clues or signposts as to the origin of his found sounds, and tracks are simply labelled “Part 1”, “Part 2” and “Part 3”. Like much drone music, Iris frequently hints at eschatalogical concerns, but Parlane chips at his tracks’ backbones with fidgety, skittering noise. The unidentified skree in “Part 1” is evocative of sounds as disparate as running water, close-contact recordings of ants devouring rotten fruit or static emanating from the sun. [David Hemingway]

Evoking past imageries while remaining confidently firm in its tracks, Rosy Parlane’s music certainly has all the necessary tools to become an indispensable reference for everyone putting its money on the table looking for lasting emotions. Parlane builds muffled majesties at accessible level, so that one is not taken with force in order to understand; on the other hand, the slowly turning contrasts between stalling suggestions and concrete sources, often elaborated by a computer, generate a sense of safety that’s never jeopardized, leaving all channels open until you reach a sort of submissive condition. The absolute best is the second movement, where music flows like small puddles covering a subtle stratum of sand; it’s an island of meditative calm amidst mysterious intersections of currents, with extraordinary muted mirages coming out of colliding bodies. Ear pleasure is granted in every moment of the record, though. [Massimo Ricci]

Signal to Noise (USA):

Seemingly every critic commenting on Rosy Parlane?s latest disc of ambient electronica draws reference to Jon Wozencroft?s accompanying artwork. The cover photograph, a view of a snow-dusted garden bathed in the most mystical blue, is not only a fine piece of art, it provides perfect visual accompaniment to the sounds heard within. Iris is an exercise in slow motion, three 50 minute tracks that evolve lethargically, forcing the listener to settle in for the epic journey. And much like the wintry wonderland of the cover, the record has a chilly mysterious atmosphere. Parlane holds control over the record?s enveloping drones and pops like a master puppeteer, tugging a particular sound to prominence while sliding another softly from the stage. Even with the artist?s exactitude, the muted rings and chirps create a blurry beauty for the listener. The real treat (and one of the most draw-dropping moments in recent electronica) comes six minutes into ?part 1?, when the nocturnal hum is overcome by what sounds like a hail of digital diamonds, an ice storm of crystalline crackles and soft bursts of static. [Ethan Covey]

Like listening to a Nor’easter. On headphones. From inside a snowflake.

New Zealand Herald (NZ):

Watching an experimental musician such as Rosy Parlane perform can leave you wondering whether it is self-indulgence or absolute brilliance. There isn’t much happening, but there’s the most pristine noise – be it absolute calm or plain piercing. The tracks take an age to happen and most of the time little does happen. Or is it just because this type of music is so close to dance music that we automatically expect the beats to kick in and something to happen? Parlane is a teacher in the beautiful art of patience and Iris is an extraordinary listen. The shards of sound that pelt down on you are sharp enough to pierce your skin. At times it sounds like an iced-over windscreen that’s cracking and melting on time delay. He makes it easy to imagine it unfolding in front of you. [Scott Kara]

Newsletter

Join the Touch mailing list

To join our mailing list, simply type your email address below and click submit. You will be mailed an auto-notification that Touch has received your address, and then redirected back to this index page.

Licensing and Rights

Over the years there have been many and various usages of Touch Music works; from ballet to film, theatre to dance, the range of titles available in the Touch catalogue seems to suit many different media. Click here to discover more…

Mentorship

Touch has established a curated mentorship programme, whereby assistance is given to individuals whose methods and aims of working we respect and would like to support. This could take the form of assistance with application and grant proposals, working practices and also with general advice and input from our experience and background in the creative industry. Read more about the programme here…

App for iOS

Touch is a free app that keeps you up-to-date with Touch news; read about and listen to tracks from the Touch catalogue; stream each and every Touch Radio episode; save Jon Wozencroft’s Touch cover art as wallpaper and cook meals from the Touch Recipe Book.